


Good Love

by transdimensional_void



Series: I Swallowed the Sun [3]
Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: Angst, Break Up, Divorce, F/M, Fluff, Implied Sexual Content, M/M, Phandom Big Bang, Religion, Series, Songfic, parent!phan, reunited
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-19
Updated: 2016-11-19
Packaged: 2018-08-31 19:56:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,061
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8591512
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/transdimensional_void/pseuds/transdimensional_void
Summary: After twelve years apart, Dan and Phil are giving their relationship another go, but things are off to a rocky start. (Songfic based on "Good Love" by Bat for Lashes)





	

**Author's Note:**

> This is the final part in a trilogy, so I recommend you read the first two parts before you read this one! Thanks so much to my beta, spaghattanadles.tumblr.com and my INCREDIBLE artist Nikki, whose art you can see here: http://pinofs.tumblr.com/post/153390735875 .

_But I need sorrow, baby, like sorrow is the drug,_

_So will I ever find that place they call good love?_

 

*************************************************

 

 

He stretches out his arms toward Dan, but no one is there.

 

The sheets are sweaty, and they cling to his legs as he turns for the hundredth time to face the empty side of the bed. There’s been no one but him in this bed for months now, but he had closed his eyes and conjured a warm weight beside him and a soft sound of breathing, and for just a split second Dan had been there with him in this bed he’d never once slept in.

 

He opens his eyes but doesn’t focus. His alarm clock is just there, across the bed from him. If he looks too closely, he’ll see the time, and he doesn’t want to know just how long he’s lain like this, barred from sleep by a swarm of buzzing thoughts.

 

There’s work tomorrow, and he needs to sleep, but instead of sleep there are Dan’s restless fingers, picking at the hem of the shirt he’d worn that afternoon. There are Dan’s fidgeting eyes, flitting their gaze toward Phil’s face and away and to Phil’s hands and away and towards Phil’s eyes and away. There is Dan’s voice, tripping and stumbling through a conversation that Phil is almost sure was dead upon arrival.

 

There is an aborted attempt to reach for each other at the end of the day, a shift of the shoulders, hands half-raised, a jerk of the neck to the side, and uneasy laughter.

 

They’re three months into this thing, whatever it is, and Phil is wondering if he’s kidding himself. Three months in and they can’t so much as manage a hug.

 

He closes his eyes, breathes slowly out and in, slowly out and in, slowly out and in. He needs to just let go. All the questions will still be there when the sun comes up. He smooths a hand across the bare bed sheet, focusing on nothing but the slight tickle of the cotton against his fingertips. What if it were skin, he wonders? The warm skin of Dan’s back stretched across the bed beside him. He would draw his fingers up and over the blunt jut of his shoulder blade, slide across and down the back of his arm. And Dan would squirm away and make a laughing protest.

 

“You know I’m ticklish there!”

 

He knew, or rather he remembered.

 

“You’re one to talk. All the times you’ve tickled me, and yet you dare--”

 

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

 

He can just see the way the corner of Dan’s mouth had lifted. Most of his face had been buried in one of Phil’s pillows, so it was just the left side he could see. One mischievous eye scrunched up and staring at him, and the corners of the lips curled up in a smirk.

 

“Liar!” he’d cried and pounced, fingers digging mercilessly into Dan’s sides, searching for a ticklish spot. But Dan had just lain there beneath him, body shaking with laughter.

 

“It’s not fair! It’s like you turn it off when you don’t want to be tickled.”

 

Dan had rolled onto his back unexpectedly then, smirk still in place, eyes still fixed on Phil.

 

“I’m sure you’ll find a way to turn me back on again,” he’d said and winked.

 

Phil hadn’t breathed for just a moment, but then Dan was reaching for him, arms open and eager, and Phil had fallen in between them, down to Dan and his parting lips and the breath he breathed into Phil’s hungry mouth.

 

But that was ages ago. Before everything. The sheet is cold beneath his fingers, and he refuses to raise his eyelids because on the other side of them time is steadily pressing on toward the morning.

 

When his alarm clock sounds, there will be work. There will be stark daylight and all the questions still to be answered. Dan’s name lighting up his phone with another cheerful text, “But is it forced?” he’ll wonder. “Are we just pushing on in hopes that eventually we’ll get there?” You can only hold the match to the candle’s wick for so long before it burns your fingers and you have to let go.

 

At 6:45, the alarm goes off, and Phil, only half-asleep, grits his teeth, turns it off, and rolls out of bed.

 

“You could just end it.”

 

“ _Mum_ ,” he complains, but the complaint sounds half-hearted.

 

“I just hate seeing you unhappy when there’s no need to be.”

 

“I’m not unhappy.”

 

It isn’t a lie. It really isn’t. Now that it’s day and the street is lit with a mundane grey light and there are people bustling all around him, he can see how distorted his focus had been last night. Sure Dan had seemed nervous, but could he blame him for that? His own heart had been beating in a fluttery rhythm throughout their entire date, and it hadn’t been because he was unhappy to be there. So what if they hadn’t hugged? They’d hugged other times. This time was just--

 

“But you may be soon,” his mum’s voice cuts across his thoughts from the other end of the line. “Don’t blame yourself that it didn’t work out this time either. You’ve given him a fair shot.”

 

“Just because I have doubts doesn’t mean it’s not working out, Mum,” Phil retorted. He is nearing the front of his office building again, and he cringes a bit as his slightly-raised tone draws a couple of stares. _It’s just harder than I expected it to be_ , he wants to say, but he knows she’ll only take that as encouragement. He hadn’t called because he wanted to be talked into breaking up with Dan.

 

“I know,” she replies at last. “I just want what’s best for you...for both of you, really. Maybe this is a chance for both of you to finally move on.”

 

“I have to get back to work now,” Phil says in lieu of answering her.

 

She pauses, and in her silence he can hear every word she isn’t saying.

 

“Have a nice day, love,” she tells him finally.

 

“Thanks, Mum. I will,” he assures her and then doesn’t.

 

He’d like to quit dwelling on everything she’s said, to find a way to dislodge from his brain the doubts she’s planted there...except she really hadn’t planted them there. Every word from her mouth had been a perfect echo of his own worries.

 

But they are only worries, he tells himself, and worrying a thing might be true doesn’t make it true.

 

 

_Dan is really beautiful._

 

Phil has this thought while sat across from Dan at a greasy Chinese food place close to Dan’s flat (He hadn’t wanted to go too far away just in case the girls’ babysitter called).

Phil’s stomach had been all tensed up when they’d first walked through the door of the restaurant, and he’d struggled to start a conversation once they’d sat down. But then Dan had started reading their Chinese zodiac descriptions off the placemats and making grade school-level jokes about the Year of the Cock, and Phil had been so busy rolling his eyes and pretending he wasn’t laughing to feel nervous anymore.

 

And now their food has arrived, and Dan is teasing him about his less-than-adequate chopstick skills. There’s fried rice dribbling down his chin, and Dan is shaking his head, his mouth open in a laughing grin that shows all his teeth and squeezes his dimple into existence. And Phil can’t help thinking how beautiful Dan is.

 

It’s a thought that hadn’t really occurred to him until now. At least, not since _before_.

 

He’d used to be almost obsessed with Dan’s beauty, all those ages ago when they were teenagers… Spent hours daydreaming about the color of his eyes and the shape of his lips and his broad palms… It had been a shock to see how much he’d changed in the past twelve years, to realize that the boy he’d so often daydreamed of was gone forever.

 

It’s almost as though he’s had to grieve the loss of Dan, even while Dan has been right there with him. But maybe now his period of mourning has ended because looking at the man across the table from him, he is struck by how beautiful Dan is right now. His eyes are still that same shade that makes Phil think of endless falling, though now every time he smiles deep creases form around them that Phil knows will someday become permanent. His lips still curve in a way that makes it difficult for Phil to ignore them, though now Phil can see faint dark patches along his upper lip where stubble will appear in a few hours.

 

His hands are the same -- exactly the same as Phil remembers, just a little larger, his palms a little broader. When the check is paid, Phil reaches for one of those hands, and his heart drops into his stomach as he feels his own hand swallowed up inside it. Change isn’t a bad thing, he thinks, as they stroll down the street, past brightly-lit shop fronts and all the other people who’ve come out to enjoy a warm summer evening in August.

 

They talk about going to a movie, maybe, but then Dan says he’d rather be able to keep talking, so they settle on going into an arcade they pass. Phil’s disappointed it doesn’t have any old games like Pac-Man or Space Invaders, but it does have a weird deer-hunting game that they play once and then quit because it feels a little too lifelike. Dan eventually wheedles him into a round of Dance Dance Revolution, which of course Dan wins.

 

“I don’t know why I let you convince me to do that,” Phil wheezes as soon as the last song ends, as he wipes actual sweat off his forehead and leans against the back rail for support. “We both knew there was no chance I’d win.”

 

“You enjoyed yourself and you know it,” Dan teases.

 

“Only for the first two seconds or so until it felt like my lungs were going to claw their way out of my body,” Phil huffs out, clutching his chest. “Something calmer next, please? Maybe with more sitting down?”

 

Dan laughs and leads him away to some driving game that is only minimally calmer but does at least let them sit down.

 

Phil _is_ enjoying himself, his close brush with death-by-DDR notwithstanding. Playing video games with Dan is filling him with a rush of nostalgia, but one that is refreshingly free of regret. What does he have to regret, after all, now that Dan’s beside him again, taunting him about his inferior gaming skills and then shouting advice and encouragement to him in the very next breath? This, at least, is just as it ever was.

 

An hour later, they’re back on the street again, hand in hand again and wandering without really thinking of where they’re going. It takes a while for Phil to notice they’ve made their way back towards Dan’s block of flats. When they stop out front, he thinks they’re saying good night.

 

So he leans in for a kiss.

 

It isn’t the first time they’ve kissed since Dan came back. There have been plenty of other nice dates that ended in soft pecks good night.

 

But this time, after a moment, Dan’s fingers are in his hair and his tongue is licking over Phil’s lips, and suddenly Phil’s breathing isn’t breathing so much as it is turbulence inside his lungs, air roiled by the turmoil his heart rate’s been kicked into.

 

He opens his lips, and he feels Dan’s other palm close over his hip and the front of Dan’s body pressing into him, urgent and wanting. He knows Dan like this, hungry, insistent, fingers knotted in his hair until his scalp stings. He’s dreamed of Dan like this, moving them steadily closer to the door, asking him upstairs without actually asking, but he finds himself pulling back. He’d made no conscious decision to do so, but one moment Dan’s close enough to feel his heart beating and the next, Phil’s stepping back, forcing a space open between them.

 

“But what about your daughters,” he breathes, “and the babysitter.”

 

Dan stares at him uncomprehending for a second. In the blue light of the streetlamps, Phil can see his pupils are blown wide and his cheeks are flushed.

 

“Esther and Hannah are in bed by now,” Dan says at last, blinking a few times like someone surfacing after a long dive. “I’ll pay the babysitter when we get upstairs, and she’ll leave.”

 

Of course it’s that easy. Phil doesn’t even know why he asked.

 

“Maybe I should go,” he says. “It’s late.”

 

Dan’s staring at him again.

 

“It’s not even 11:00,” Dan says.

 

“There’s work tomorrow.”

 

Dan’s forehead wrinkles up, but then he shrugs.

 

“Okay. That’s fine.” He nods his head slowly. “I, um, I had a good time tonight.”

 

“Yeah,” Phil nods too, summoning a smile to his lips. “Me too. Well, good night.”

 

“Good night,” Dan returns, and the wrinkles in his forehead haven’t disappeared.

 

On his way home, Phil stares at the other people on the tube. He sees that the girl across the way is missing a nail from her manicure, that the man further down has a bald spot that glows dully in the stark, white light of the carriage, that two drunk kids two seats down from him have fallen asleep on top of one another, one snoring and one drooling. He makes sure to notice all of these things because it makes it easier to pretend he hadn’t noticed Dan’s confusion.

 

But why should Dan have been confused? Phil can turn him down if he wants. Phil can not be ready yet. They can keep taking things slow and getting used to one another and not rushing into it. These are reasonable explanations for his behavior this evening, and if Dan had asked, he might have said those words to him. _Let’s not rush it. I’m not ready yet. I need time to--_

 

He’s walking up his own street to his own flat and wondering what the end of that sentence would be -- not the one he might have tacked onto it for Dan, but the true one.

 

Just the thought of how Dan had kissed him this evening, with his lips and his hands and his entire body, is sending a flush of heat from Phil’s face down to his abdomen. Here in the darkness of his lounge, he can easily imagine what might have come next -- the moment to compose themselves before going inside, the babysitter’s knowing expression, Dan saying he needs to peek in on the girls first, the hurried stumble through the bedroom door, the rush to get each other’s clothes off, Dan’s hands on his skin and Dan’s body weighing him down -- Here in the darkness of his lounge with just himself to confess to, he can admit that he’s getting hard just imagining it.

 

He wants Dan. He knows he wants Dan, yet clearly there’s some part of him that doesn’t.

 

His phone rings the next evening, half an hour after he’s returned home from work.

 

When he sees Dan’s name and grinning face on the screen, something inside him tenses, like a knot being suddenly drawn closed.

 

He tells himself to answer, tells his finger to press the green button and his mouth to say hello, but they don’t. He doesn’t. He lets it go to voicemail, and a minute later when his phone buzzes to let him know there’s a new message waiting, instead of listening to it, he turns his phone off entirely and sets it down on the table in front of the sofa and goes to his room and shuts the door.

 

_“I know it’s kind of like closing the stable door after the horse has bolted--”_

 

_“I’ve never let a horse out of a stable, personally, so I’ll take your word for it,” Phil had interjected, causing Dan to cast him an annoyed glare._

 

_“Neither have I, Phil, but you know what I mean,” he’d said, pretending to be far more exasperated than Phil knew he really was. Phil couldn’t stop himself grinning. They’d been walking down the street hand-in-hand on their very first date since Dan had come back, and things had been going better even than he’d expected. Dan had asked a lot of questions about Phil’s life now, trying to catch up on the twelve years of it he’d missed out on. Eventually the conversation had come to the present -- to the two of them and this relationship and what they were going to do about it._

 

_“I know,” Phil had relented, nudging him a bit with his shoulder. “Your girls have been through a lot and you don’t want them to get too attached to me if it’s not going to work out.”_

 

_“Well, it’s not that I don’t think it’s going to work out,” Dan had rushed to say, “It’s more just… The only person they’ve ever seen me with was their mum, and I need to learn how to be with you myself before I can help them understand it. You know what I mean?”_

 

_“Yeah, of course,” Phil had said, but also in the back of his mind, he’d added, ‘and in case it doesn’t work out, you don’t want them to get hurt again.’_

 

Two nights later, Dan shows up at his door. As soon as he opens it to find Dan standing on the other side, he feels like the most selfish person in the world. He knows it couldn’t have been easy for Dan to come here at this time of night. He must have gotten a babysitter again or asked a friend to come over to watch the girls.

 

It’s on the tip of his tongue to apologize, but Dan speaks first.

 

“Can I come in?” He sounds as hesitant as though he were asking someone to buy him Buckingham Palace rather than simply asking his boyfriend if he can enter his flat, and Phil feels like an even bigger jerk.

 

“Yeah, of course!” He steps back and waves Dan inside, eager to appear as inviting as he had been distant the past couple of days.

 

Dan steps through and walks over to his sofa, but instead of sitting down, he stares back over at Phil. Then he crosses his arms over his chest and hunches his shoulders up. Phil can’t help thinking of a spring that’s been scrunched as far down as it’ll go, all that pent up energy poised and ready.

 

He turns away to close the door, giving himself a moment to breathe deeply and think about how to defuse the building tension.

 

When he turns back, he offers Dan a small smile, holding his gaze as he walks over, and then pointedly takes a seat on the couch near where Dan is stood.

 

“Wanna sit down?” He gestures toward the space beside him.

 

Dan nods and sits. Phil watches as he consciously uncrosses his arms and straightens his shoulders. He’s trying to loosen up, but the fingers of his left hand have found the hem of his t-shirt again and Phil can see how they won’t stop rubbing and pulling and stretching it.

 

“Did I do something wrong?” Dan says at the exact same time Phil says, “I’m sorry.”

 

“No!” Phil exclaims at once, shaking his head. “It’s my fault. I don’t know what’s been wrong with me, just--”

 

“You’ve been ignoring my calls,” Dan insists.

 

“I know.”

 

There’s a pause while Dan waits for an explanation and Phil tries to think of one.

 

“Is something wrong?” Dan asks, almost the same question as before.

 

“No,” Phil says because it’s not. There’s nothing wrong, nothing that he can name at least.

 

“Are you sure?”

 

Phil nods.

 

Dan sighs and looks away.

 

“I’ve been worrying myself sick these past two days.” He says the words without any force or malice, but Phil still feels them like a punch in the stomach. “You aren’t upset?” He looks back at Phil again, eyes wide to catch any smallest clue from Phil’s demeanor.

 

“I’m not. I just--”

 

“I thought you were upset,” Dan rushes on, sounding kind of out of breath. “I thought maybe I was forcing myself on you, because you didn’t want to come upstairs, and that’s fine. It’s fine, Phil, of course, but I thought maybe you hadn’t wanted me to kiss you at all, and I’m really sorry if you didn’t. I should’ve thought--”

 

“No, I wanted you to,” Phil protests. “I wanted to do everything with you.”

 

“No, you didn’t.”

 

“Well, I didn’t, but…” Phil’s feeling as confused as Dan looks.

 

“Something’s wrong,” Dan states, and Phil wishes he would stop saying that. He’s fine. They’re fine. This is a momentary setback, and any moment now, it’s going to strike him exactly why he hasn’t been able to answer any of Dan’s calls or even listen to his messages these past two days. _Twelve years I waited to hear from him. He can wait two days for me to return his phone call._

 

But it’s not like Dan owes him or anything.

 

“I just needed some time to think, but I’m fine now. Really.”

 

“Think about what?” Dan is relentless, and Phil is starting to find it irritating.

 

“Just about us. This.” He waves a hand around in the air. His heart is beating in his stomach, and it’s making him feel nauseated. “I don’t know why I reacted like that the other night, Dan. I’ve been thinking about it all this time, and I still don’t know.”

 

Dan’s still staring at him, but Phil can see some of the tension easing from the corners of his eyes and lips.

 

“Okay,” Dan says. “It’s okay if you don’t know why. I know this whole thing is...complicated. Just...I was hoping we could figure it out _together_.”

 

“We can.”

 

“Then talk to me about it,” Dan pushes on. “Tell me what you’re feeling right now.”

 

“I--” Phil says but then realizes he doesn’t know what he was going to say. He’s feeling confused and irritated, with both Dan and himself. Why can’t he just be normal? Why can’t he just be a normal man who kisses his boyfriend and follows him upstairs and has sex with him and is happy about it? Why does he have to feel so broken every time someone tries to love him?

 

In the past, there had been such an easy answer for all those questions, but now...his easy answer is sitting right here in front of him asking to know what’s wrong.

 

“Yes?” Dan says, a slight, encouraging smile lifting his lips.

 

Phil takes a deep breath.

 

“I think I’m still mad at you.”

 

Dan’s small smile fades at once.

 

“For wanting to have sex with you?”

 

“No, not that,” Phil shakes his head. He looks away from Dan’s face. It’s too hard to say this when he can see him still. “It’s just… You went away. I mean, I know it wasn’t your fault. I don’t blame you for that. Or...I mean. I don’t _want_ to blame you for it. I know you couldn’t help it.”

 

“Then what, Phil?” Dan’s voice comes quick and low as soon as Phil pauses.

 

He stands up then, his fingers sliding up into his hair as he walks to the other side of the room and back. He stops beside the sofa. He still can’t look at Dan, though he can hear his breathing, deep and far too quick.

 

“I spent twelve years...thinking about you. Worrying about you. It’s hard to just… It’s just, suddenly you’re here, you know? And I have to stop thinking of you as this person who just...left… Tore my heart out and took it with him… And never once called me for more than a decade.”

 

He stops. He can’t think of any more words to say, at least not ones that will be helpful.

 

They both wait a long time, Phil for better words to come, and Dan...probably for the same.

 

It’s Dan who finally breaks the silence.

 

“I’ve said I was sorry, Phil--”

 

“I know,” Phil says at once, looking down at Dan’s face at last. He looks so defeated. The blood begins pounding hard behind Phil’s eyes.

 

“There’s literally nothing else I can do about it,” Dan says, shaking his head back and forth just the tiniest bit. “It’s not like I can go back and change things.”

 

“I know.” Phil feels like he’s squeezing the words out around a pile of boulders that’s suddenly tumbled into his chest.

 

“If you know, then…” Dan sighs and then lifts his shoulders and spreads his hands out before him. “If you can’t accept that, then this isn’t going to work.”

 

Phil bites his lips. The blood in his head is pounding even harder. He can’t think. He can only bite his lips and stare at Dan. _I know_ , he wants to say, but he’s already said it too many times. There’s no point in saying it again, not when knowing something is so different from believing it.

 

At last, Dan’s eyes harden up, and Phil knows he’s lost the moment. Maybe he could have still said something, a few seconds ago, to right their swiftly-tilting vessel, but now--

 

“Okay then,” Dan says and slaps his knees with finality. “Okay, that’s it then.”

 

He stands.

 

Phil’s arms are twitching. They ache to reach for Dan and hold him back from leaving, but if he did, what reason could he give Dan to stay? _Stay...but I can’t promise I’ll stop resenting you. Stay...but I’m still angry at you for everything._

 

“I should go,” Dan says, and Phil doesn’t disagree.

 

So Dan goes.

 

He doesn’t look back at the door or make any kind of parting remarks. He just walks to the door and opens it and then closes it behind himself, and Phil can hear his footsteps echoing all the way down the stairwell outside.

 

Dan doesn’t cry. Not on the way home and not even once he’s walked into his own flat and paid the babysitter and checked on the girls and closed himself off in his room alone.

 

He’d fully expected to cry. It’s something he’s learned to accept about himself over the years -- how quickly and easily the tears come. But they don’t come tonight.

 

It’s not like he’d thought everything was perfect between them. He’d never expected things to be perfect in the first place, so when he’d felt that distance...the nearly tangible _space_ Phil always left between them, the hesitant pauses before speaking, the half-closed doors in his eyes, he’d thought very little of it.

 

These things took time, he knew.

 

So when the other night everything _had_ seemed perfect and Phil had laughed and joked and spoken his thoughts without a moment’s hesitation, Dan had breathed an internal sigh of relief. They’d finally turned the corner. They were finally getting there. And when he’d kissed Phil, he’d _known_ that kiss. They might be older and more experienced now, but Phil still kissed the same way he had when they were teenagers desperate to tear every last bit of sensation loose from each encounter.

 

For a moment, they had been themselves again… Or rather, he’d deluded himself into believing they were themselves again.

 

He’d been forgetting that those selves he’d been so desperately searching for were phantoms at best. Like a word written down and scratched out and written on top of a dozen times over. Maybe somewhere there, under all that scribbling, the paper still bore some impression of the original idea, but to anyone hoping to find it, it was as good as gone. No matter how immanent and real his memories made it feel. No matter how much of the past he could taste on Phil’s lips.

 

Nostalgia should come with a warning label, he thinks as he rolls over in bed and yanks the duvet over himself: Objects in memories may be farther than they appear.

 

Nothing shocks him more than the voicemail he listens to on his phone the following afternoon.

 

He still hasn’t cried. He thinks this must be some kind of personal record for him. Back when he and Maria were still together, he used to cry every single time they fought. He doesn’t know what is different with Phil. He thinks it must be because he’s just not as invested. The relationship is barely three months old, at least in its current version, whereas he and Maria had spent a full nine years together. Three months is nothing, not when he’s got two children whose happiness and health take up the vast majority of his energies. He doesn’t have time to be upset that things didn’t work out with Phil.

 

Or so he hopes, as he drops the girls off that morning, Esther at her school and Hannah at hers. They’d both been chatty at breakfast, eager to tell him all about the fun evening they’d spent with their babysitter. Her name is Funmi, and he’d found her through a local agency. She is a university student studying primary education, and she is, frankly, a god-send. He’d been lucky that she’d been available on such short notice last night.

 

“Did you know that ‘astronomy’ means learning about space and stars and things?” Esther tells him as she carries her cereal bowl over to the sink.

 

“Does studying space and stars sound interesting to you?” Dan asks dubiously as he helps her climb up on the step stool and start washing up. Esther’s wanted to be a singer like her mum for as long as she’s been able to speak. He almost can’t imagine her doing anything else.

 

“No,” she states flatly, shrugging, “but it was one of the vocabulary words Miss is making us memorize.”

 

It startles him a bit, hearing his daughter refer to her teacher as “Miss.” They’d started back at school only this week, and up until now, Esther had called her teacher Ms. Brooks. She must have picked up the habit of calling her “Miss” from the other kids in her class. It sounds a little odd in her American accent, though that is beginning to change as well.

 

“Did Funmi practice your vocabulary words with you?”

 

“Mm hmm!” Esther nods, grinning and then jumping down to dry her hands.

 

“Is it my turn?” Hannah calls from the kitchen table, and Dan looks over to see her wiggling in her chair, bowl clutched precariously between her hands.

 

“Yep!” he smiles, gesturing her over. It takes more time (and more help from her dad) for Hannah to get her bowl clean, but when she hops down and dashes off to her room, she is grinning too. She’d already shown him the drawings she and Funmi had made together last night, now proudly displayed on the refrigerator.

 

The girls are both doing so much better than they had been even a month or two before. They seem happy and adjusted, and maybe it’s good that things with Phil are over now. He can’t deny he’d been worried about what would happen when he finally sat the girls down and explained that their dad had a boyfriend. One of Esther’s classmates had two mums, so that at least had given him a natural opportunity to answer some of their questions about who could marry whom. They are young enough that they hadn’t been particularly fazed by the concept, just curious. He isn’t so sure they would remain so unperturbed if one of the persons in question were their own father, though.

 

But there is no need to worry about such things anymore, at least not for the time being. The girls will have more space and time to settle in, to get comfortable with the idea of their dad not being with their mum, and he will have more energy to devote to them. It really is the best thing for all of them, now that he thinks of it.

 

And that must be the reason why he hasn’t shed a single tear over this. It’s for the best. It’s what he really wanted all along. And he certainly isn’t harboring a single hope that Phil just needs time to think through his feelings before moving forward. That can’t be it.

 

He’s at the studio, stopped for a break after several long hours of recording, when he checks his phone and sees the missed call and the voicemail. Phil’s name is just casually shining up at him from the screen of his phone, and suddenly the tears are right there, stinging the edges of his eyes and clawing at the insides of his throat.

 

“I’ll be back in a few,” he tosses over his shoulder, not waiting to make sure anyone has heard him before he dashes out into the hallway and down to an old studio he knows isn’t likely to be in use right now.

 

“Hey. It’s me,” he hears Phil’s voice say on the other end of the phone as he fumbles across the gloomy room for a chair to sit on. He hears a ragged breath on the other end of the line, and the sound is enough to bring the tears rushing down his own cheeks. He finds a chair and sinks into it, and Phil says, “I’m really sorry. I shouldn’t have...said… I was wrong, Dan. I’m really sorry. Can I… I guess you probably don’t want to talk to me right now, but I’d like to… I mean, if you can meet me somewhere after work. Or later. Just...whenever you can. Please.” Phil pauses, and Dan can hear a muffled sound on the other end, like another voice speaking in the background. It’s the middle of the day. Phil must have been calling from his office. “I’m so sorry, Dan. Please call me back.”

 

That’s the end of the message.

 

He’s full on sobbing now, but that’s okay. They’re more tears of relief than anything.

 

He sends Phil a text because his break is almost up, and he needs to get back.

 

_at the studio right now. i’ll give you a call later._

 

He wants to type so much more. _i’m sorry too, that i ever hurt you. i’m sorry i waited so long to find you again. there’s no need to keep crying. you’re already forgiven._

 

He can hear the difference in his playing once he gets back to the studio. He’s recording with an R&B artist today, and he can tell everyone else in the studio hears the difference too, by the raised eyebrows and sidewise glances he gets. He’s never been able to play without baring everything he happens to be feeling at the moment. He knows it’s a weakness, and sometimes it hurts his playing, but today… His heart is soaring and his blood is burning through his body like it’s been lit on fire, and he can hear the flames in the notes too as they leap and sizzle from inside the piano to heat the air of the stuffy studio.

 

“That was some fine playing,” one of the producers tells him at the end of the session as he’s heading out the door.

 

“Thank you.” He grins as he steps outside, already pulling his phone from his pocket.

 

There’s no response from Phil, but when he opens up the conversation, he can see that Phil had read his message just a couple of minutes after he’d sent it.

 

He calls his friend Lucy first and breathes a sigh of relief when she says she’d be happy to pick the girls up after school and watch them for an hour or two. He has to call each school after that as well, to notify them that someone other than their dad will be signing the girls out.

 

When he finally calls Phil, he isn’t surprised that he only gets Phil’s voicemail. Phil will still be at work for another hour or so.

 

“Hi. It’s me. I’ll meet you at your office when you get off work,” he says. “Maybe we can get coffee or something. I’ll see you then.”

 

He keeps his tone neutral. He can’t let on how hopeful he is, how much excitement and expectation Phil’s message has woken in him.

 

He’s waiting on the pavement just outside of Phil’s office building at 5:00 that afternoon, just as he always used to, and it’s funny that he’s already feeling nostalgia for something that happened a mere three months ago. And anyway, what is there about lurking outside your ex-lover’s office building to be nostalgic about? It sounds damn creepy now that he looks back on it.

 

Phil walks out at exactly 5:04, eyes casting about until they fall on Dan.

 

“Hey,” Dan says.

 

“Hey,” Phil replies, lips jerking up for a moment in a quick almost-smile. “There’s a Costa right around the corner…”

 

Dan nods and by tacit agreement, they both turn and begin heading toward the coffee shop.

 

“I’m really sorry,” Phil blurts out before they’ve taken more than two steps. “What I said was really wrong. I shouldn’t have said it.”

 

Dan stops and turns to look at Phil, who had been just a pace behind.

 

“You should have said it,” he counters. They’re stopped in the middle of the pavement, and people are pointedly going around them, so he reaches out and tugs Phil gently toward the side of a building. “You have to be honest with me, Phil.”

 

“I know,” Phil dashes a nervous glance to the side as a cluster of people dressed in business attire pushes past them. “That’s why I shouldn’t have said it. I… I mean, I wasn’t lying. I was trying to be honest, but it was wrong. It was actually wrong. I don’t think that I’m… I mean, I don’t think that’s really it. I’m not still mad at you.”

 

Dan raises his eyebrows.

 

“Okay, what really is wrong, then?”

 

Phil takes a deep breath, blows it out through his lips. He looks like he’s gathering his forces for a speech, but then someone jostles his shoulder as they brush past, and he darts another glance at the crowds.

 

“Look, I don’t think this is the best place for this,” he says.

 

Dan can’t help but agree.

 

“You wanna come over to mine instead?” Phil offers.

 

Dan is about to point out that the coffee shop is only a few steps away, but it is late afternoon, and workers are pouring out of the buildings around them in a rush to get home from their work day, and anywhere they go is likely to be full to the brim with people.

 

“Yeah, all right,” he agrees.

 

It’s an awkward ride for the both of them. Every car is full, and they’re forced to stand, bodies squished together by the crowd of people around them. Dan can feel the rough cloth of Phil’s jacket rubbing against his chest with every sway and jostle of the train. And of course there’s their interrupted conversation, hanging tense and unresolved between them. Dan’s dying to know what Phil had been planning to say, and at the moment he can’t even look at Phil’s face to study it and try to guess. At least Phil lives only a few stops away.

 

He’s been over to Phil’s place a handful of times in the past few months. Already it is becoming familiar. He doesn’t have to pay attention as he follows him blindly to his door and inside and to the sofa, which is probably a good thing as he only has eyes for Phil.

 

He gives him just a moment to get settled before he presses on.

 

“So, what’s going on, then?”

 

Phil’s looking up at him, meeting his gaze at last, and within Phil’s eyes he can see the fear so plainly now. It’s taken him all these months to even begin to learn to read Phil again, but now it’s all there, laid bare before him.

 

“When you left…” Phil stops and takes a deep breath, drawing his forces about him again. “It was awful, Dan. I couldn’t sleep. I couldn’t eat. All I could think about was talking to you again.”

 

Dan nods.

 

“I know,” he sighs. “I’m sorry I hurt you. I wish I’d contacted you sooner--”

 

“No, not that,” Phil says, waving his hands. “I mean, when you left last night.”

 

“Oh,” Dan says.

 

“After you left, I just… I was so afraid that you would never come back. I realized I was so terrified of losing you… I wasn’t mad at you at all, Dan. I’m just...terrified of messing up and losing you again.”

 

“Then...why did you say you were mad at me?” Dan asks slowly.

 

“Because I thought I was,” Phil says at once. “All I could think about was how much it hurt when I lost you before… That’s what I always think about.” Phil frowns and then lets out an exasperated sigh. “Because this is what I _do_ in relationships, Dan. I start to get happy. I start to enjoy them, and then I get scared. I get scared that if I get invested again, I’ll get hurt again, so I find some way to fuck them up.”

 

“So that’s what the other night was?” Dan asks, eyebrows raised again. “Your way of fucking things up so I couldn’t hurt you again?”

 

Phil gives a helpless little shrug.

 

“I guess.” He pauses, breathing in and out once. “But usually once the other person is gone, I just feel sad and kind of relieved. Or angry with myself for not being able to try harder. But with you...I was so afraid you weren’t going to come back,” he says again. “I just kept thinking of anything I could say or do to get you to come back.”

 

“Well, I’m here,” Dan states, spreading his hands open. They both see right away that the gesture is a challenge. So Phil’s gotten what he wants. Dan is here. And what is Phil going to do about it?

 

Phil looks down at the two empty palms for a moment before shifting his gaze back up to the face of their owner.

 

“Why did you come back?” he asks. “I thought you wouldn’t want to talk to me ever again.”

 

Dan considers. The truth is he’d come back because he’d thought this was about him. He’d thought it was about his mistakes, the ways that he had wronged Phil. He’d thought he would come here and Phil would set a penance for him, some way he could fix things, make up for the past. And maybe that was fucked up -- that he’d been so eager to come here and crawl on his knees and beg Phil to take him back -- but it wasn’t any less fucked up than Phil making him beg in the first place.

 

But now here he is, and Phil isn’t asking him to beg. Phil is asking him to forgive. He is asking him to accept that they are both a little broken, that this whole relationship is a little broken. And maybe he is asking him to accept that there _isn’t_ really any way to fix it. Because they are both so invested already -- god, how could he have deluded himself that he wasn’t already up to his neck in Phil -- and no matter how much it hurts to be together, they are both convinced it would hurt more to stay apart.

 

He shakes his head. They can’t go on this way. If nothing else, he has to keep himself sane for Esther and Hannah’s sake.

 

So why is he still here?

 

“I came back,” he tells Phil at last, “because even after everything you said…” He pauses and looks up into Phil’s eyes that are fixed on him like he’s a judge about to read a verdict. “Even after that, I still couldn’t wait to see you again.”

 

Phil is still staring at him, but his eyelids have fallen a little lower and his lips have parted to show just a hint of their moist inner edge.

 

“You couldn’t?” Phil breathes out.

 

Dan shakes his head. This is madness. All of it is madness. But there’s a surge of something rising in him, something that’s urging him toward Phil -- all the worry and anxiety of these past few days has welled up within him, transformed into the profoundest feeling of relief and affection and hope and desire and--

 

“I think I’m in love with you,” he tells Phil. “Again,” he adds, with the tiniest breath of laughter.

 

Phil’s eyes drop completely closed, squeeze shut tight for a moment as a smile twitches onto his lips.

 

“Yeah,” he says, “Yeah, me too.”

 

When Dan kisses Phil this time, it is full of all the same urgency as before, the same want, the same hurry. But this time there are no stairs or front door or babysitter to slow them up.

 

Phil’s hands are pulling at Dan’s jacket, and Dan’s fingers are fumbling at the buttons down the front of Phil’s shirt. They’re both half-naked before they notice how narrow the sofa is and Phil suggests they’d enjoy themselves more if they moved to his bedroom.

 

It’s just like Dan remembers, but better. Phil is just as gentle as he’d ever been, but he’s no longer the fumbling teenager still learning how everything works. Dan doesn’t have to teach Phil what to do anymore or worry that he’s moving things too fast -- though he has learned, in the intervening years, that faster isn’t always better. He’s learned patience, moderation, the exhilaration of a slow build.

 

Not that either of them is in the mood for slow this evening.

 

Phil has Dan on his back with his jeans on the floor and his pants around his knees within minutes. His mouth is here while his hands are there, and Dan lets himself go in the feeling of it, lets every concern slip away as though he is dissolving into Phil and the sound of Phil’s voice whispering in his ear how often he’s dreamed of doing this, how long he’s waited for this moment. How long they both have waited for it -- not the sex so much as the closeness. And when Phil sinks down onto him, the little moan he lets out is almost too much. Dan’s hands are impatient, holding, squeezing, urging them both on toward their highs. When Dan finally reaches his, it’s like everything dark inside him is whited out for a moment, like Phil has found a way to scour his insides perfectly clean, and he’s looking up at Phil’s face with the clearest vision he thinks he’s had in years.

 

Phil lays his head on Dan’s chest afterward, and Dan can feel the flutter of Phil’s heart against his abdomen. He reaches up and strokes Phil’s hair. It’s so soft and fine, runs through Dan’s fingers so easily, like water. He doesn’t remember them ever doing this before, Phil lying on him like this with one of Dan’s arms around his sweat-dampened back and the other reaching up to play with his hair. And Dan thinks that, for once, they’ve managed to do something new.

 

“It’s been a long time since I’ve done that,” Dan murmurs after a while.

 

“Had sex with a man?” Phil murmurs back, his lips tickling the bare skin of Dan’s chest.

 

Dan lets out a quick snort of laughter that makes Phil’s head shake.

 

“No, not that. Right after the divorce, I kind of… You know, it was like a big ‘fuck you’ to my parents and the church and Maria and everything.” He pauses, lets out another, slightly more bitter laugh. “No, I meant… It’s been a long time since I’ve...um, made love, I guess.”

 

“Oh,” Phil says. Dan can’t see his face, and he kind of wishes he could right now. “It’s been a long time for me too.”

 

“I love you,” Dan says, because it’s true, and he can.

 

“I love you,” Phil says back, and the words sound simple and sincere. Dan feels that thing surging in his chest again, like he’s riding on the crest of an endless wave.

 

“I need to tell you something,” he says. He feels so brave and whole at this moment, like nothing can touch him, so he thinks this is the moment to say it. “I love you so much, and I want you in my life, but...my girls are the most important thing in the world to me. They need me to be there for them. They need steadiness and stability...and I’ve had a difficult time providing that for them these past few days.”

 

He pauses to give Phil a chance to take in what he is saying. Phil uses the moment to push himself up, planting an elbow either side of Dan so he can look down into his eyes. His serious expression seems at odds with the flush across his cheeks and the ruffled state of his hair.

 

“I know,” Phil says. “I’m sorry.”

 

Dan raises a hand and brushes his fingers over the faint pink along Phil’s cheekbone.

 

“I need to know that, if we’re going to do this, if we’re going to try this thing again, you’ll help me be what Esther and Hannah need me to be.”

 

Phil nods, a quick movement of the head up and down. He looks eager, his expression wide open for once.

 

“I want to help you with that, and with everything. I want...I want this to be real. I want to be in your life in a real way.”

 

Dan’s lips spread in a smile.

 

“I want that too,” he says and pulls Phil’s face down to his chest again.

 

He’s taking a chance, he thinks, trusting Phil not to sabotage things between them again. But of the two of them, Dan is the one who finds it easier to trust. If one of them is going to believe in this relationship, he thinks it will probably have to be him.

 

Phil meets Dan’s daughters for the second time two weeks later. The four of them meet at the London Zoo and spend a Saturday afternoon weaving in and out of the crowds and enjoying the animals. Both of the girls are cautious at first. Dan hasn’t told them yet that he and Phil are dating, so they know him as nothing more than their dad’s old friend who once showed up at their front door for no apparent reason.

 

It takes most of the day for them to warm to him, with Hannah clinging close to her dad’s side and Esther eyeing the newcomer with close scrutiny. But a couple of ice cream cones and a lively debate about the competing charms of giraffes and penguins later, Hannah has relaxed enough to reach for Phil’s hand instead of her dad’s when a passing stranger startles her, while Esther has already gotten to work trying to charm him into becoming her latest fan.

 

He and Dan share a glance as they part ways at the entrance to the zoo that evening. There’s a glow of happiness lighting Dan’s face, despite the lines of weariness worn into it from a day spent dealing with two energetic girls. His expression stirs something in the pit of Phil’s stomach, something almost like panic but also excitement. Things are going well, and so far, Phil isn’t feeling any urge to run.

 

He tells his mum about it the following afternoon when she rings him for her weekly check-in.

 

“They seemed to like me well enough,” Phil explains as he lounges on his sofa and browses his favorite shopping site.

 

“His daughters?” his mum’s voice asks from the other end of the line.

 

“Yeah, Esther and Hannah. I’ve told you about them before, right?”

 

“You have.” She pauses. Then, “I’m surprised he’s had you meet them so early on.”

 

“Well, I kind of already met them once, back when we first found each other again,” Phil says. “And we’ve not told them we’re dating yet. We figured it’s best to let them get to know me first.”

 

“Yes, that probably is for the best,” she says. “It’s always better to be careful when there are children involved.”

 

“Mm hmm,” Phil hums, half of his attention off his mum’s words and on the foot-massager shaped like a pair of monkeys that his favorite online shop has on sale at the moment. Dan’s birthday has already passed, and Phil’s isn’t for another four months… Maybe he could buy it as a birthday gift for his brother?

 

“I hope you aren’t taking that too lightly,” she adds after a moment, and his attention snaps back to her.

 

“Of course I’m not,” he says, a little surprised by his own indignance. “I know that what’s best for the girls comes before...well, anything else. Dan and I are in agreement on that.”

 

There’s a much longer pause on his mother’s end this time, and then he hears a noise that he is quite sure is a sniffle.

 

“Are you crying?” he asks.

 

“No, no,” she answers at once, but her voice has gone a little hoarse. “Just...got a little misty-eyed. You sounded just like a parent right then.”

 

The response Phil had been thinking up freezes in his throat. He wonders if she really means it. She’s mentioned on more than one occasion that she thinks he’d made a great father, but he’s always assumed that was nothing more than a way of hinting that she’d like to become a grandmother soon. Even a mild hint like that from his mum had always caused him panic in past relationships. Fatherhood meant settling down, planning long-term. It meant permanence, and every single relationship Phil has ever been in has been anything but. Yet here he is, promising Dan to make things work, to put his daughters’ needs above the terror he feels every time he contemplates the future.

 

His mother’s words are still simmering in the back of his mind five days later when he gets an unexpected call from Dan at 8:00 in the evening. They’d been on another outing with the girls the day before, just a short trip to the park with a picnic dinner and some dedicated playground time, and he and Dan had texted throughout the day today as they’d begun to do regularly. Dan had told him he was hoping for a quiet Friday evening at home, so it surprises Phil to see his phone lighting up with Dan’s name.

 

“Hey,” he says, answering almost immediately.

 

“Hey, are you free now?” Dan asks at once.

 

“Yeah…” Phil says, frowning to himself. “Do you want to come over?”

 

“No.” Dan sounds distracted. There’s a pause, and Phil can hear a small voice in the background -- Hannah, he thinks. Then he hears Dan’s voice answering, slightly distant, “Yes, just give me a moment, okay? Sorry about that,” he says directly into the phone again. “Something’s come up, and...I was wondering if you could come over to watch the girls for me. I tried Funmi and Lucy and everyone I could think of, but no one’s free on such short notice…”

 

“Oh, um,” Phil says, suddenly nervous. Dan wants him to watch his daughters...alone? Phil’s never taken care of kids by himself before. The idea of it sounds...intimidating. But Dan sounds desperate, so, “Okay. Yeah, I can… Do you need me to come right now?”

 

“If you can,” Dan shoots back immediately. His voice has gone lower, and from the lack of background sounds, Phil thinks he might have moved to a different room. “I got a call a half an hour ago… From Maria. She’s here, in London.”

 

Phil’s jaw drops a little.

 

“I don’t remember you mentioning she was going to visit,” he says slowly.

 

“Yeah, I don’t remember her mentioning it either,” Dan mutters. Then he lets out a short sigh. “I don’t know when she arrived, but she called and said she’s here in a hotel and wants to see the girls, and…” He pauses for a long time, long enough for Phil to sense the worry in him. “I’m going to go talk to her first,” Dan finally says.

 

“Right,” Phil nods. “I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

 

“Thank you,” Dan sighs into the phone. “Really, you’re a lifesaver.”

 

“Don’t mention it,” Phil mumbles and hangs up.

 

He knocks on Dan’s door at 8:43. Dan opens it with a tear and snot-streaked Hannah on one hip, Esther behind him with arms crossed over her chest, and hair that looks like it’s had a good working-over from his fingers.

 

“Thank god you’re here,” Dan says, pulling the door wider and stepping back to let Phil in.

 

“Why’s he here?” Phil hears Esther demand, and has to suppress a grimace. And here he’d been thinking the girls were starting to warm to him. “Where are you going?”

 

“I told you that I would explain later,” Dan calls over his shoulder as he carries the sobbing Hannah back into the living room. “Phil is helping me out by staying here with you two since I need to go out. I’ll be back just as soon as I can, but in the meantime, Phil will be here to help you with anything you need, okay?”

 

Phil looks down at Esther and smiles while Dan attempts to shush his younger daughter and set her down on the sofa. Esther glares up at him but then gives a curt nod.

 

“And you’re going to help Phil with anything he needs since he may not know where to find things, right?” Dan says as he peels Hannah’s arms from around his neck. She begins sobbing louder, and he transfers his attention to her. “Shh, shh, I’ll be back soon, okay, baby? You can stay up until I get back if you want to, okay? And I’ll be sure to tuck you in then.”

 

Hannah’s sobs subside a little, though she makes no response. Her sister comes over and sits on the sofa next to her, placing an arm around her small shoulders.

 

“Thank you, Esther,” Dan says, standing upright again and rubbing a little at his back. Hannah is getting a little too big to be carried, but this is an emergency. “You’re being such a great help to me right now.”

 

He steps back and then meets Phil’s eyes. Phil swallows down his rising panic and gives his boyfriend a reassuring nod.

 

“Okay,” Dan says, looking back at the girls, Hannah hunched over and hiccupping a little while her older sister rubs her back. “I’ll be back in just a couple of hours. Phil has my phone number and will call me if you need me.” He pauses, then bends over and drops a kiss on each of their heads. “I know I can count on you to take care of Phil while I’m gone.”

 

“Yes, Daddy,” Esther says. Hannah sniffles a little and rubs at her nose.

 

Dan steps away from them and motions Phil toward the door again.

 

Once there, he begins murmuring instructions in a quick, fluent undertone.

 

“Emergency numbers are on the fridge. I’ll text you the hotel address as soon as I’m in the taxi. They’ve both eaten, and it’s almost Hannah’s bed time. If she falls asleep, you can take her to her room, but let her stay up if she wants.” He pauses, takes a deep breath. “It’s probably best to find something to distract them. I made the mistake of letting them see how worried I was, and...well, you can see the result.” He shakes his head a bit and reaches for the door. “I’ll be back as quick as I can.”

 

“Don’t worry about us. Just leave it to me,” Phil says, amazed at how confident he sounds.

 

Dan gives him a brief smile, nods, and then he’s out the door.

 

Phil heads back into the living room to find the girls still sat there on the sofa. Esther looks up when he walks in, eyes slightly slitted as though she taking his measure. He clears his throat. _Remember, they’re more afraid of you than you are of them… Wait, no, that’s not kids, that’s snakes._

 

“So,” he says, making his best attempt at a friendly grin, “if I remember correctly, we’re due for a re-match at Mario Kart.”

 

It’s close to 11:00 when Dan finally leaves the hotel and hails another taxi. The way the taxi driver stares at him as he climbs in makes him wonder if he looks as beat down as he feels. Less than two hours spent in Maria’s presence, and he remembers in a very distinct and immediate way exactly why their marriage had ended. There had been a lot of crying on her part, and ranting about how ungrateful their former fans were. Apparently the rebranding hadn’t exactly gone to plan. She’d come to London, she had said, to center herself...to see her family, her girls, and remind herself of who she’d used to be, who the fans had used to love.

 

“Where are the girls?” she’d demanded the moment he’d set foot in the massive hotel room she’d reserved for herself. She always had been a conspicuous consumer. “Did you bring them with you?”

 

“It’s too close to their bedtime,” Dan had reasoned. “I left them with a friend for now so that we could talk, just the two of us. So...what are you doing here?”

 

And that was when the tears had come. She’d stood there in the center of her gilded hotel room, back straight and head high, her tiny 5’4” frame swathed in a silk floral caftan, and she’d burst into beautiful tears that had left shining tracks in her thick foundation.

 

It had taken all of Dan’s skill at cajoling to soothe her, to get her to have a seat on the brocade-covered divan while he brought her a box of tissues and a sparkling water from the mini bar. And then it had taken all of his powers of diplomacy to convince her that he wasn’t interested in taking a tour of the hotel bed (“Just for old time’s sake?”) without causing her to dissolve into another round of tears. Somehow he’d managed to forget Maria’s tendency to throw herself at someone when she was feeling low.

 

But at last he’d managed to extricate himself with a promise that he’d bring the girls to see her tomorrow, that they’d go out and do something together, as a family. He’d had to grit his teeth over the word, keep himself from sharply reminding her how happy she’d been to pass off her parental duties just five months ago. But he’d held his tongue, if only because he could distinctly picture Hannah, tear-stained eyes droopy with sleep, stubbornly refusing to let herself drift off until her dad had come to tuck her in.

 

“I can’t wait to see my girls again,” Maria had exclaimed as she ushered him out the door, her black eyes shining once again with tears. “I’m sure they’ve missed me almost as much as I’ve missed them.”

 

“I’m sure they have,” he had murmured before hurrying out the door. He’d been afraid that if he’d seemed to linger, she might get the idea that he’d changed his mind about staying.

 

But now here he is in the taxi, pulling up outside his block of flats, and he’s paying the driver and getting out. He’s walking up the stairs, his whole body aching with a weariness that has as much to do with being emotionally drained as physically so. He puts his key in the door and pushes it open, pulling it quietly shut behind him before trudging down the corridor toward the living room. He can hear the sounds of a movie playing with the volume turned down low -- _Beauty and the Beast_ , he thinks. He smiles a little to himself. Someone had finally managed to convince Esther to watch something other than _Frozen._ Apart from the movie, the flat sounds quiet, no crying, no arguing…

 

He reaches the door to the living room and stops. There they are on the sofa, his two girls, curled up and fast asleep, each with a head on one of Phil’s knees. Phil himself is sat in the center, a hand on each girl’s back, his gaze fixed on the movie that only he seems to be watching. There is a slight smile curling the corners of his lips, and Dan thinks he looks...content.

 

Dan has to step back around the corner again, back into the corridor where no one can see, because suddenly the tears are coming, quick and sharp.

 

More than a dozen years ago, he’d fallen in love with a boy -- a boy with wary eyes and bruises on his cheeks and a seemingly endless capacity to be amazed by the world around him. He’d fallen in love with a boy who, beyond his own ability to understand why, had fallen in love with him back, and for a few, brief months the two of them had lived in paradise.

 

Six months ago, he’d found a man, eyes made warier by having experienced paradise and then lost it. And it had seemed the man Dan had loved had lost that quality that Dan had once cherished the most -- that willingness to open himself up to the world, to take it in and savor it, to let it change him as it would.

 

All the way home from Maria’s hotel, Dan had thought about how grateful he was to Phil for helping him out this evening, for showing he was someone Dan and his girls could rely on. But standing here in his own front corridor, swiping tears from his cheeks, he knows that Phil is lucky to have them too.

 

 

_He wakes in the middle of the night, in a room that is warm and full of the soft sounds of breathing. There is a body in the bed beside him. He isn’t awake, but he knows he is not alone. His hand almost feels like it wants to reach out and take hold of the person beside him, but he doesn’t. There is no need._

 

 

He stretches out his arms and stands from his desk. It’s warm here in the office, hot even. He’s spent much of the day wishing he’d worn a short-sleeved shirt to work. But the weather app on his phone tells him it’s a chill 5 C outside right now, so he grabs his coat and carries it over his arm all the way down in the lift to the lobby. When he reaches the front door of his building, the glass is spattered with drops of rain, glowing faintly white under overcast skies. He shrugs on his coat, steps outside, and raises his umbrella. Thank goodness Dan reminded him to take it with him this morning.

 

The tube is packed as usual, and bundled up in his winter raincoat as he is, it’s far too warm inside the crowded carriage, but the ride to their flat is blessedly short. When he and Dan had decided to move in together six months ago, they’d been fortunate enough to find a place that was relatively near his office without costing an arm and a leg. It had more space for the girls, too, which had been one of the main reasons they’d decided to look for a new place. They have a playroom now, with plenty of space for Hannah to sit and paint or Esther to pretend she is on stage in a sold-out arena.

 

It’s odd, he thinks to himself as he squeezes out of the carriage and onto the platform at their home station, but if you’d asked him eighteen months ago about what he had planned for the near future, it would never have even crossed his mind to suggest he might be a parent of two.

 

Well, he isn’t their parent in any legal sense, but he helps Hannah brush her teeth in the mornings and helps Esther with her homework in the evenings, and he is the one who always claps and cheers the loudest at the end of Esther’s vocal performances, and the one who had insisted Hannah’s art be framed and hung on the bare walls of their new place. And Hannah has taken to calling him Papa. Esther still refers to him as Phil, but there is no malice in the distinction.

 

When Dan had finally sat his daughters down and explained to them that he and Phil were dating, Esther had rolled her eyes and said, “Duh, Dad,” and Hannah had just giggled. And when Dan and Phil had both sat down with the girls and explained that Phil was going to stop spending the night so often and instead just live with them all the time, they’d both jumped and yelled as though they’d just been told they were getting a second Christmas. (And as a matter of fact, as much new furniture and decorations as they’d each gotten with the move, it might as well have been a second Christmas.)

 

He steps under the overhang that shelters the front entrance of their building and shakes the rain from his umbrella. It’s an especially cold November, and London is just as rainy as ever. He shivers a little and then ducks inside, glad to be in out of the wet.

 

The girls seem happy to have him around, but he does wish sometimes, for their sake, that their mum would come to visit again. It had been tough for all of them, that sudden visit of hers, disturbing the comfortable pattern their lives had begun to settle into. For months after, the girls had asked nearly every week when their mum would come to London again. Dan had called and emailed, even offered to take all three of them to Florida to see her, but somehow she always seemed to be too busy. Eventually, the girls had stopped asking.

 

He pauses outside the door of their flat, stamping his feet on the welcome mat to shed some of the drops of rain that cling to his shoes. He slips out of his coat too, shaking it out a little onto the absorbent mat.

 

Two Novembers ago, he never could have guessed that parenthood was just around the corner, or love, or happiness. He never could have guessed that anything at all was there.

 

His key makes a satisfying click in the lock. It’s always good to be home again, he thinks.

 

“Surprise!”

 

He’s only halfway through the door when the word stops him in his tracks.

 

“We baked a cake,” he hears Esther exclaim, and then he registers the scene in front of him. Dan is knelt on the floor in front of him, cake balanced on both palms, with Hannah reaching up both her own hands to steady the plate that holds it and Esther off to one side, arms flung out as though she is an emcee introducing a star. A grin takes over his face, and he meets Dan’s eyes, which are shining with happiness and….nervousness?

 

That’s when he notices that there’s something spelled out on the cake in icing, the handwriting so messy he isn’t sure whether Dan has written it or Hannah: “Will you make us a family of four?”

 

He blinks for a moment, feeling a stinging at the backs of his eyes. The “O” in the word “four” isn’t icing. It’s a ring, a simple platinum band.

 

Phil reaches up and brushes away a tear, and nods.

 


End file.
